Troubleshooting Set-up and Connections
Sometimes, you’re sure that you have everything plugged into the right place, you’ve turned everything on, everything’s playing, but you just can’t hear anything. Take a look through the following list of troubleshooting issues, and see whether one of these solutions can answer your connection and
turntable set-up problems.
Why do my needles keep jumping when cueing?
If you’re having a problem with your needles jumping around, try working through these possible solutions:
Refer to your manufacturers guidelines on where to set the height and counterweight of your tonearm. If you’re given a range of numbers to set the counterweight to (between 3 and 5 grams for example), set the coun- terweight to the lowest number first, then gradually increase the weight until the needle stops skipping.
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Check the settings provided with the needle and cart for the height of the tonearm, and make sure that it’s completely parallel to the record. If you need to set the weight or height to more than the recommended amount, your technique or needles could be at fault:
• Make sure that you’re cueing the record back and forth in the curved direction of the record. If you push and pull horizontally, rather than in a curve, this action may make the needle jump.
• Old, worn needles are more prone to skipping.
One of the turntables sounds really bad, it’s distorting, and the high fre- quencies sound fuzzy.
The first thing to do is to look at your needles. Are the needles caked in dirt?
(Carefully remove the dirt from around them.) Are they really old? (Replace them.) Are they inserted into the cartridge properly? (Check, and re-insert them.)
If you think it’s a malfunction, try swapping the headshell from one turntable to another or try swapping the needle from one headshell to the other. In case you have a connection problem rather than a needle or headshell prob- lem, try swapping round the turntable connections to the mixer.
I hear a really strange humming noise coming from my turntables.
The ground wire may not be connected. Make sure that it’s securely attached to the earth/ground connector on the back of the mixer.
Everything’s connected, a record (or CD) is playing, but I can’t hear any music through the amplifier.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Are the LEDs on the mixer flashing up and down to show that the mixer is receiving some music? If not, there’s currently no signal.
Have you used the correct inputs on the mixer for your CD players or turntables and set the Line/Phono switches accordingly? (Line for CD, Phono for turntables.)
If you’re currently playing one channel of music, have you made sure that the cross-fader is on that side, and the channel-fader it up at least to 75 per cent, and if the cross-fader has an assign function to control any of the channels, is it switched to control the correct channel?
If the mixer LEDs are flashing, have you made sure that you’ve con- nected the mixer’s Master Output to a Line input on the amplifier?
If the amplifier has the capability for multiple inputs, have you made sure that you’ve set the input switch or button to the correct input?
Are Master Level and the Input Level on the amplifier set at a point where you should hear music?
Are the speakers connected?
Have you tried connecting something else to the amplifier to check that it isn’t a problem with the amplifier, or the input channel you’re using?
I can hear the music from the amp now, but I can’t hear anything through the headphones.
Try the following steps:
Firstly, check that you have your headphones plugged in, turned up, and switched to monitor the correct channel.
Try turning all the headphone cue switches on. If you can hear music now, you were pressing the wrong cue button, or you’ve connected your equipment to a channel you didn’t intend.
Plug your headphones into another piece of equipment with a head- phone socket (such as the amplifier) to make sure that this problem isn’t a malfunction with your headphones.
Why is everything distorting badly when I play a CD?
Check if you’ve inserted the outputs of your CD decks into the Phono inputs of the mixer by accident. This causes distortion. Plug into the Line input.
Why is everything really quiet when using my turntables, even when everything is turned up to maximum?
Make sure that you’ve plugged your turntables into the Phono input. If you’ve put them into the Line input, they’ll be very quiet.
Everything sounds nice through the mixer, but distorts through the amp.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Have you turned up the input level on the amp too high? Turn it down a bit; see if that helps.
How strong a level are you sending out of the mixer? Take a look at where the LEDs on the mixer are flashing; try not to play the music above + 5 dB on the scale, as it may cause some nasty distortion.
Have you plugged into the Phono inputs of the amplifier by accident?
Change the connections to plug into the Line inputs.
Music is happily playing through the mixer, but I can’t get any music into the PC.
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Try the following steps:
Make sure that the speakers on your computer are turned on and all volume controls (including the computer’s) are turned up.
Check the connections and ensure that you’ve plugged the output from the mixer to the Line input of the soundcard. You may find a Micinput right next to the Line input, so double check that you didn’t plug into the wrong place when you were fumbling behind the PC.
Check the meters on the recording software. They will be bouncing up and down if they’re receiving a signal or will sit at 0 if not.
Check the Record Control (which you can access through the volume control icon on the taskbar). Double check that Line input has been selected, and that the input level is set to at least 75 per cent?
Have a quick read of the manual that came with the software and the soundcard to see if you need to do something special.
The meters are flashing like mad in the software, I’m able to record what’s going in, but nothing is coming back out of the PC.
Check that you’ve connected the Line Out from the soundcard and not plugged into the Mic or Line In by accident.
Check the Volume Control found in the task bar. Make sure that you haven’t accidentally checked the mutebox thinking it was the select box from the Record Control (I do this all the time).
Why doesn’t my recording device seem to record anything when con- nected directly to the mixer?
Have a look at your connection. There’s a good chance that you didn’t con- nect the Record Output to the Line In on the recorder.
If that isn’t the case, ask yourself three questions:
Did you accidentally use the Booth Output to send to the recording device, but turned the Booth Output volume off? If so, switch the cables over to Record Out, which is preferable to turning up the booth output.
Is the input level control on the recording device switched to accept the Line input, and turned up to an appropriate level?
Does your recording device need to be in Record mode in order to regis- ter any input? This isn’t a common case on home tape and MiniDisc recorders, but on a lot of professional equipment, if a CD/DAT/MiniDisc is in the machine, you need to press the Record button on its own to get the device into record mode (the machine only starts recording when Record and Play are pressed together), which tells the electronics to accept a signal in rather than just play a signal out.
Part III
The Mix
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In this part . . .
DJ skills are two-fold. Beatmatching is the core skill of the electronic dance music DJ – all DJs who play this genre of music need this skill. Chapter 12 in this part tells you all you need to know about beatmatching.
The second part of your DJ skills are the most important, and apply to all genres of music – choosing the tunes to play, the order to play them, and how and when to mix between them.
If you want to add another layer of creativity and perfor- mance to the mix, scratching is covered in Chapter 16, with guidance on how to start your journey as a creative DJ or a dedicated scratch turntablist.
Chapter 12
Grasping the Basics of Mixing
In This Chapter
Discovering the essence of club DJing
Working out the tempo of your records – beats per minute Finding the first beat of the record with confidence Starting your records so the beats play in time Using the pitch setting to match tempos of records Getting to grips with headphone cueing techniques
DJs play music. They play music that people want to dance to, and play music that keeps them on the dance floor. As a DJ, if you can’t do that simple thing, you’re not going to be a big hit with the crowd.
Club DJs employ a technique called beatmatching, which makes the bass drum beats of two different records play at the same time. That way, when they change from one record to another, the people on the dance floor don’t have to adjust their dancing rhythm.
In this chapter, you discover all the tools and skills you need to beatmatch.
The secret of successful beatmatching is simple: good concentration and lots of practise – no special tricks required. The great news is that once you’ve made the investment of devoting your time and concentration to mastering beatmatching, the skill sticks to you like glue.
Knowing What Beatmatching’s All About
Matching beats is a very simple concept, but it’s the core skill of every club DJ.
Although certain kinds of music don’t lend themselves to beatmatching (rock music, for example) if you want to play in a club where the DJ is expected to beatmatch records to mix them together, you’d better develop the skill!!
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Through the course of a night, a DJ gradually makes the music play faster and faster until it reaches what I call the sweet spot. This sweet spot occurs when the bass beat from the music matches the speed of the heart beats of the people dancing. This speed can be anything between 130 and 145 beats per minute for most club music, but can be more depending on the music genre.
When the speeds of the pounding bass beats and the thumping heartbeats get closer and closer, the combination of pulsating rhythms begins to do strange things to the body and emotions of the people on the dance floor.
This euphoric moment is commonly signified by a hands in the airmoment on the dance floor. It makes me sweat a bit, but that’s just me . . .
Importantly, even if you consider this phenomenon as some kind of voodoo mind control, you need to understand that you have to play at a tempo where people are comfortable dancing, are really enjoying themselves, and the night has a great energy to it.
Understanding BPMs
Beats per minute(BPMs) are a way to describe how fast (known as the tempo) your records are. The name gives it away; the BPM is the number of beats that occur in one minute.
As a very broadgenerality, house music has a BPM between 110 and 130 BPM, trance music ranges mostly between 130 and 145, and hard-house and happy hardcore can be well in excess of that.
Practice makes perfect
Practice makes a huge difference when devel- oping your beatmatching skills. If you practise for two hours a night, you should be 75 per cent as good as anyone else at beatmatching by the end of one week – it’s the last 25 per cent, per- fecting it, that takes time to develop.
As you become more comfortable with your records and turntables, you’ll probably take a month or so before you get the beats matched quickly without having to rush it or ‘guess’ in
order to start the mix before the other record runs out.
You may take months, maybe even years to achieve perfect beatmatching and be confident that 99 per cent of the time, you have the beats matched accurately and that they stay locked together for the duration of the mix. Just remember that during all that time spent prac- tising, you get to listen to the music you love and the music you want to hear.
Calculating BPMs
When you try to beatmatch two different records, knowing the BPM of each tune helps you make an educated guess about how much to adjust the pitch control(which is what you use to change the speed of your tunes).
You can adopt two main approaches for counting BPMs:
Use a beat counter. A beat counter is a useful DJ backup tool that auto- matically calculates and displays the BPM of the tune for you. Stand- alone counters that calculate the BPM of what you’re listening to in the headphones, or that you plug the individual channels into, cost between
£70 and £200. If you’re thinking about BPM counters, and you haven’t chosen your mixer yet, it makes good financial sense to look at a mixer with built-in BPM counters. Instead of buying a basic mixer and an expensive BPM counter, the combined money lets you afford a really good mixer with built-in BPM counters.
Calculate the BPM yourself. The free approach. It doesn’t take long, and is easy to do. Set the tune to 0 pitch and get a stopwatch ready. Hit start, and count how many bass beats you hear for 30 seconds. If you counted a beat as you started the watch, subtract one and double the figure – that calculates the beats per minute for that track.
For example, if you counted 67 beats in 30 seconds and counted a beat as you hit start, the BPM would be 66 x 2 = 132. If you counted 60.5 beats in 30 seconds, and started counting after you started the stop watch, the BPM would be 60.5 x 2 = 121 BPM.
You can count the beats for an entire minute of course, but you’ll proba- bly find that the difference between the 30 second and 60 second count isn’t noticeable enough to warrant doing it for longer.
If you can get into a routine of calculating the BPMs of your records as you buy them, you’ll always be on top of your calculations.
Don’t count your life away
I used to spend a full minute calculating the BPM because I wanted to be sure that I was really accurate. Eventually, I figured that by the
time I’d counted 120 records, an extra hour of my life was used up for no real reason! I’d rather have spent that hour mixing.
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After you’ve been DJing for a few months, you find you don’t have to worry about knowing exact BPMs any more. After a while, you’ll not only develop the skill to tell instantly if a tune is faster or slower than the one playing, but you’ll also develop a memory of the general tempo of your records before you play them and won’t need to refer to calculations.
Discovering How to Beatmatch
Your choice of format doesn’t matter – CD, vinyl, MP3, or anything else – the mechanics of beatmatching are the same. It’s just the controls that are different.
Vinyl DJing is the skill that’s most easily transferable to other formats, so as I take you through how to match beats, I reference using turntables. Chapter 15 covers the mechanics of using CD equipment, and most DJ computer pro- grams emulate the controls on CD equipment, so Chapter 15 is also relevant to computer DJs.
Setting up your equipment
A few basic settings and requirements can help you master the fundamentals of mixing comfortably:
Make sure that your DJ setup is switched on and hooked into an ampli- fier (check out Chapter 11 for more on connecting up). Don’t worry about headphones for now; you get to them later.
Use two copies of the same record (preferably something that has a simple, constant beat from the very beginning). The reason for using two copies of the same record is that when both pitch controls on the turntables are at 0 (known as the green lightarea), they both play at exactly the same BPM. This fact means that you don’t have to worry about one tune playing faster than the other, and makes getting to grips with starting your records and keeping them in time a lot easier.
Set your mixer so that you can hear both records at the same time and at the same volume. (Typically, this requirement means moving the cross fader into the middle, and setting both of the vertical channel faders to maximum, with the gain and EQ (equaliser) controls set the same on both channels). The reason you set the mixer to hear both records at the same time is so that you only have to worry about work- ing with the tunes – you don’t waste time and concentration trying to adjust the controls on the mixer. This method may sound messy while you’re starting out, and your dog may leave the room, but don’t worry – you’ll move on to proper mixing soon, and the dog needs some exercise.
Locating the first bass beat
Every journey begins with a step, and every beatmatch begins with a beat. To start with, find a tune with a solid, clear bass beat right from the beginning.
(In a perfect world, all records would start with a constant bass beat, making beatmatching a lot easier.)
Whether you’ve chosen a record with the beat at the beginning, or if you’ve picked a record that has its first beat 45 seconds in, the following points can help you locate the first bass beat so that the needle is cued up(ready to play) at the very instant the first beat is about to play:
Listening for the beat:The first option is to simply start the record from the beginning and wait until you hear the first beat. Place your finger on the record to stop it playing when you hear the first beat, and play it backwards by hand. As you play the record backwards, you hear the part of the record you’ve just heard playing in reverse. (Don’t be overly concerned about revealing any Satanic messages when doing this; dance music doesn’t tend to contain any.) If you use a tune that starts with a beat from the very beginning, the last thing you hear playing backwards is the first beat. The instant that beat goes silent is where you want to leave the needle.
Winding to the beat:If you’re impatient or in a rush, you can turn the record around really fast with your finger until your hear the
‘brrrrrrrrrrrp’ noise of beats playing really fast, then play the record backwards until you find the very first of those beats.
Looking for the beat:Take a close look at a record, and you can see a lot of different shades of grey and black rings (the target light on your deck shows up this shading). The darker parts of the record means that it doesn’t have as much information cut into the groove and is likely to not contain a beat. Look at the beginning of the record where the rings change from dark to light – the lighter shaded area contains more sound information, and is probably where the beat starts. Place the needle where the dark and light rings join. If you can hear the beat, spin the record backwards until the beats stop, if you still hear the introduction, play the record forwards until you find the first beat.
If you have a wave displayon your CD decks, which has a series of peaks and troughs to show the louder and quieter parts of the tune, refer to your wave display to find where the big peaks begin – that’s likely to be where the beats start. (For more on CD deck functions, check out Chapter 15.)
No matter how you choose to locate it, make sure that the needle is waiting patiently at the very beginning of that first beat, press stop, and get ready to start your tunes!
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